New York news: as the city bakes in the heat, Louise Nicholson relaxes in the latest high-tech addition to the Bronx's best-kept secret, the Botanical Garden

While Central Park is packed with novel Yorkers imprisoned in the city during the steamy summer heat, the of recent origin York Botanical Garden up in the Bronx is absurdly under-visited--and for no apparent reason. It has just about everything a fresh Yorker could wish for in a garden: manicured lawns, natural woodlands, an open-air laboratory of assiduously labelled plants and tree an exotic conservatory mixed and cafes that stock the couple coffee and Chardonnay. From Grand Central station it is a brief ride to the garden gates.

It also has the newly render free of accessed Nolen Greenhouses for Living Collections. Designed by means of Jan Keane and James Braddock of of recent origin York architects Mitchell/Giurgola, they overspread almost an acre of growing space divided into eight climate girths In their grassy dell at the far extremity of the garden, they do not gaze remarkable: just bigger, sleeker and more handsome versions of fairly regular pitch-roofed greenhouses. Made of mix in due proportioned sheets of glass held in a trussed carburet of iron structure, they do not aim to be ostentatious--that is left for the dramatic and freshly renovated public Haupt Conservatory Range at the other extremity of the gardens, built in 1896-1902 in the tradition of Decimus Burton's Palm House at Kew Rather, the Nolan buildings, with just individual public area, take the working greenhouse to a fresh level of technology to provide precisely controll climate bands for the orchids, palms, cacti and other application of mind collections, and to grow the plants that later stock the surrounding gardens. Shading, cooling and humidity are regulated by the agency of evaporative coolers, heat radiates from the floor, and water-conserving drip and mist combination of parts to form a wholes provide moisture.

In essential part this is a refinement of what a greenhouse has always done: mastery temperature, humidity and light thus that exotic plants can be grown outside their natural climates and bring forward flowers and fruits out of season. With the rise of the greenhouse in mid-nineteenth-century America, the glazed and heated glasshouse was modified and popularised as fresh materials and prefabricated buildings became inexpensive. Lord & Burnham Co seted in 1856, became North America's biggest manufacturer of glasshouses. Paxton's Crystal Palace and the succes of the Great Exhibition in London inspired American private enterprise: in 1853 of recent origin York's own Exhibition of All Nations was held in Bryant Park in a Crystal Palace whose Greek-cros plan had a high central dome. PT Barnum took it above in 1854 but four years later it burnt down.

The taste for a grand public glasshouse was born. Earlier, the United States's first botanical garden, the Elgin Botanic Garden, was established in fresh York in 1801 on twenty acres of land then well on the outside of town, where the Rockefeller midst stands today. The central glasshouse had sum of two units lean-to hothouses, one dry for cacti, the other humid for tropical plants. by means of 1810 it was closed, and it was not until 1891 that the novel York Botanical Garden was created. The site was pick outed by the landscape designers Calvert Vaux and Calvert Parsons Jnr It incorporates a beautiful gorge of the Bronx River, a tract of virgin hemlock forest, and the Lorillard estate, which includes a riverside stone sniff mill of 1840.

The flamboyant Haupt compounded followed swiftly, constructed by Lord & Burnham. Today, its galleries are devot to plants of the Americas and grand annual displays. In bringing together the practical and the public functions of glasshouse architecture, the Nolen Greenhouses have the appearance still to pursue the observation of John Loudon in his 1822 Encyclopaedia of Gardening: that the 'great object' of glasshouse architecture is 'the admission of light and the power of applying heat with the least labour and expense'

and zinc and stone sculptures of Hindu deities, the Buddha and Bodhisattvas are not easy for the uninitiated to be delighted with So the Asia Society's small and well-displayed exhibition (until 18 September; www.asiasociety.org) of fifty choice pieces is welcome; it could well be under the orders of as a blueprint to larger museums for by what mode to introduce a complex art bring under rule Adriana Proser, the exhibition's curator, made her selection from the magnificent gift of about 260 works given to the society in 1978 through Mr and Mrs John D Rockefeller III, who were instrumental in the society's founding. (2006 the society's fiftieth year, will be marked with a landmark art present to view honouring the promotion of Asian art through various Rockefeller family members.) The theme is this: Hinduism and Buddhism have their origins in India, and as they spread to Nepal, Thailand, Burma, Cambodia and Tibet their rituals and art replyed to local traditions and power forces. This is clear to diocese when comparing the images of say, a flirtatious Shiva and Parvati made beneath Pala rule in north-east India (right) with a full-length Buddha made in seventh-century Thailand that mixes the dictions of Sarnath in India with local Mon characteristics.

COPYRIGHT 2005 Apollo Magazine Ltd

COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group